2018's Coolest TV Scenes

The Affair (Season 4, Episode 9)

Alison got up to do the dishes, and the faucet that Ben had already fixed was once again broken. It was suddenly raining outside, and there was a knock at the door. At first, it seemed like history was repeating itself, but we soon realized that nothing we witnessed in the first half of the episode actually took place. This was all a figment of Alison’s imagination, and the transition from what could have been to what actually happened was established in one long tracking shot.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (Episode 2)

Set to the pulsating sounds of Phil Collins’ “Easy Lover,” Andrew Cunanan’s kinky S&M session with an elderly sex client was unbearably tense — and disturbingly entertaining, thanks to Nelson Cragg’s kinetic direction. With Cunanan bopping to the beat in tiny pink underwear while his client gasped for air, it played like a ’80s music video… directed by American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman.

Better Call Saul (Season 4, Episode 7)

To illustrate the growing distance between live-in lovers Jimmy and Kim, director Deborah Chow showed them leading separate lives in a heartbreaking split-screen montage. As Kim pursued a legitimate law career and Jimmy hawked his shady cell phones, they were divided by a thick black line… even when eating dinner right next to each other.

(Watch a behind-the-scenes featurette about the split-screen montage here.)

Chicago Fire (Season 7, Episode 2)

Talk about a “wow” stunt: Yes, that really was star Taylor Kinney dangling off the 23rd floor of a skyscraper, with a child in his lap. And yes, that was the real, not-at-all-CGI Chicago skyline behind him!

Forever (Season 1, Episode 8)

After they reconciled their marriage in the afterlife, June took Oscar by the hand and led him into the sea. What followed was a breathtaking, slow-moving sequence, as they walked along the ocean floor and journeyed towards the unknown.

The Handmaid’s Tale (Season 2, Episode 7)

When the Hulu drama is its most visually beautiful, it is also often its most harrowing — and that certainly held true in this scene, as black-and-scarlet-clad handmaids marched into a snowy cemetery to bury those killed in Ofglen’s bombing of the Rachel and Leah center.

The Haunting of Hill House (Season 1, Episode 6)

The Netflix drama’s sixth episode unfolded more like a play than an installment of television. The hour, which chronicled Nell’s present-day wake and a flashback to a stormy night at Hill House, was composed of several looooong tracking shots (in other words: without any cuts), which demanded that every actor and crew member work at the top of their game. Not only did “Two Storms” deliver some of the season’s best performances, but it was a stunning technical achievement that calls for multiple rewatches.

Homecoming (Season 1, Episode 8)

Director Sam Esmail came up with the perfect way to dramatize the precise moment when Heidi’s memories came flooding back: He zoomed out on Julia Roberts’ face while dollying the camera in (a classic filmmaking trick known as “the Hitchcock shot”), while also expanding the screen from vertical letterbox to full screen, indicating that Heidi’s mental blinders had finally come off.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 13, Episode 10)

Sunny got serious in the season finale, as Mac came out to his dad with an emotional modern dance number — and the scene was as visually stunning as it was poignant, with director Todd Biermann effortlessly following star Rob McElhenney and ballerina Kylie Shea across a stark, rain-soaked dance floor.

Legion (Season 2, Episode 1)

FX’s mind-bending superhero drama is always a candy store of visual delights, but it topped itself with the Season 2 premiere’s epic dance battle, with stars Dan Stevens, Jemaine Clement and Aubrey Plaza all showing off some aggressively weird dance moves. (Even Bill Irwin’s Cary got in on the act!)

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 2, Episode 4)

This Daniel Palladino-helmed, Catskills-set sequence in the Amazon jewel’s sophomore season — which saw the Weissman family get settled in their summer home — ran for two gloriously chaotic (and uninterrupted!) minutes, and was a veritable triumph of comedic timing and sound design.

Marvel’s Daredevil (Season 3, Episode 4)

Posing as Foggy, Matt Murdock snuck into Rikers to get the goods on Fisk’s ties to an Albanian crime syndicate. Instead, what he found was an epic beatdown. After Matt got whammied by a disorderly nurse’s syringe, what followed was an 11-minute sequence — filmed in one truly unedited take, using incredibly deft stuntman switchouts — in which the sightless superhero pummeled his way past inmates and corrections officers, finally plopping his bruised and bloodied self into the taxi he had waiting for him!

Preacher (Season 3, Episode 5)

If anyone ever asks you why AMC’s wackadoo comic-book adaptation is so infamous for its fights, just refer ’em to Season 3’s knock-down drag-out between Jesse and Tulip, and TC and Jody. Not only were punches thrown and shots fired, but feathers flew and “found-object bathroom weaponry” was deployed — to the jaunty tune of “Werewolves of London”!

Shooter (Season 3, Episode 13)

In the final moments of the USA Network drama’s thee-season run, we saw Red Sr. trudge through snow into an extremely remote Canadian cabin, ready to quietly boil some beef. But speaking of beefs, who should ring him on his cell but Bob Lee — who, a wide-panning exterior shot reveals, is lying in wait a whole mountain away, rifle trained on his wife’s killer? “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this” is all Red Sr. got to say before he was silenced for good.

The Walking Dead (Season 9, Episode 8)

In one of the AMC drama’s eerier scenes in recent years, Jesus fought — in stylish slowed-down and sped-up fashion, no less — what he thought were mere walkers in a foggy graveyard… until one of them whispered a reprimand as it dodged his blow and stabbed him in the back. Yikes!